Comparing Suicide Risk Insights derived from Clinical and Social Media data

TL;DR

This study compares suicide risk factors documented in clinical records and social media, revealing significant differences and missing key risk factors across both data sources, which impacts suicide prevention strategies.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive comparative analysis of SRFs in EHRs and social media, highlighting gaps and differences in documented risk factors.

Findings

EHRs mainly document depressive feelings and drug abuse.

Social media posts emphasize gun ownership and bullying.

Key SRFs like family violence are missing from both sources.

Abstract

Suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the US and the 2nd leading cause of death among teenagers. Clinical and psychosocial factors contribute to suicide risk (SRFs), although documentation and self-expression of such factors in EHRs and social networks vary. This study investigates the degree of variance across EHRs and social networks. We performed subjective analysis of SRFs, such as self-harm, bullying, impulsivity, family violence/discord, using >13.8 Million clinical notes on 123,703 patients with mental health conditions. We clustered clinical notes using semantic embeddings under a set of SRFs. Likewise, we clustered 2180 suicidal users on r/SuicideWatch (~30,000 posts) and performed comparative analysis. Top-3 SRFs documented in EHRs were depressive feelings (24.3%), psychological disorders (21.1%), drug abuse (18.2%). In r/SuicideWatch, gun-ownership (17.3%), self-harm (14.6%), bullying (13.2%) were Top-3 SRFs. Mentions of Family violence, racial discrimination, and other important SRFs contributing to suicide risk were missing from both platforms.